Monday, March 31, 2014

I
have argued for years that the Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) is not
authentic. I have argued that it was created in the early to mid-1980s because
the information contained in it reflected the UFOlogical thought of that time.
The one paragraph that seemed to prove that more than any other was the one
referring to the December 6, 1950 crash near El Indio – Guerrero area of
northern Mexico. I had suggested that this is the sighting made by Robert
Willingham and that we know that he has changed so much of the information
about it that it is clear that it never happened.

“Why
bring this up now?” you may ask.

Because
I have additional information thanks to Isaac Koi, Greg Long, and James
Carrion. Let’s take this all one step at a time.

Apparently
on October 19, 1994, Greg Long received a telephone from W. Todd Zechel, who
then launched into what was pretty much a monologue according to a document
created by Long (which makes sense since I too received one of these Zechel
telephone calls in which he talked and talked and talked until his father
yelled for him to get off the telephone). Long made notes, and the important
part of that document, at least to us here, said:

Zechel
talked about his research into the Del Rio case. He described how John Acuff
[one time director of NICAP] had put NICAP’s cases in storage. Maccabee stole
documents from the NICAP files. There was a particular file that Zechel read
regarding a crashed object in Del Rio. Zechel tracked down a name, Colonel
Willingham, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, flew to Pennsylvania, and
interviewed him. Willingham admitted that he saw the crashed object. To assess
Willingham, Zechel got the colonel’s military records and proved he was
authentic.

Later
in this same document, in a section labeled “Hoax,” Zechel again alludes to the
Del Rio case. He wrote, “[Brad] Sparks responded that he felt only two of the
cases showed some promise: the Roswell incident of 1947, which Moore had
written about, and one that reportedly occurred in Dec. 1950 near the
Texas/Mexico border.

And
later still, Del Rio is connected to the El Indio – Guerrero case, when talking
about the EBD received by Shandera, Zechel wrote:

Billed
as a briefing paper prepared for ‘President-elect Eisenhower,’ the document ‘
contains a rather lengthy description of the Roswell incident – which just
happens to verify Moore’s contentions and misrepresentations of the facts – but
only a spare paragraph describing a second incident in December 1950. According
to the new, improved model:

On
06 December 1950, a second object, probably of similar origin, impacted the
earth at high speed in the El Indio – Guerrero area of the Texas – Mexico boder
(sic) after following a long trajectory through the atmosphere. By the time a
search team arrived, what remained of the object had been almost totally
incinerated. Such material as could be recovered was transported to the A.E.C.
facility at Sandia, New Mexico for study.

Zechel
then explains how this information about the crash had come into the hands of
Moore and one of his cohorts, Richard Doty. He suggested that a manuscript that
he had written was “either given or sold… to Bill Moore…”

To
follow through on this linkage, and to prove that the information about the El
Indio – Guerrero crash is that from Del Rio and Robert Willingham, Zechel
wrote:

The
point is that Moore… obtained two separate manuscripts I had written about the
crashed saucer case which reportedly occurred in Dec. 1950, near the Texas –
Mexico border. The first manuscript… gave the location of the incident as near
Laredo, Texas. The second manuscript… gave the date of the incident as
happening between Dec. 5 and Dec. 8, 1950, and the location as near Del Rio,
Texas… No witnesses that I know of support the El Indio location given in the ‘briefing
paper,’ but, on the contrary several eye-witness accounts have verified the Del
Rio site. Moore, however, would not have known that, since I myself did not
know these facts until a couple of years after I left Hollywood.

More
telling than this is what Zechel believed about how this particular case came
to be part of the EBD. Zechel wrote:

What
I’m saying is that he [Moore] clearly knew, based on my manuscripts and Brad
Sparks’ input, that he had to acknowledge the 1950 case in the ‘briefing paper,’
but with all the bitterness, acrimony, jealousy and hate he feels toward me …
he just had to burn that sucker up!

And,
in case that hasn’t made the connection between the Willingham tale and that
from the EBD, in a letter to Walt Andrus at MUFON, dated December 8, 1978,
Zechel wrote:

What
I did say is that I had an affidavit from the retired Lt. Colonel (emphasis
in the original) – the former pilot who flew down to the crash site – about his
knowledge of the incident, which is limited to seeing the object in the air and
covered by a canopy on the ground.

This
retired Lt. Colonel is Robert Willingham who did sign an affidavit about the
crash. So, we know that Willingham is the source of the Del Rio case, who also
suggested that the crash was near Laredo. We know that Zechel was sharing
information with Bill Moore, though it isn’t clear that the sharing was
voluntary or if Moore acquired the information through some devious means. We
know that in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, many in the UFO field believed
the Willingham story because he was a retired military officer who signed an
affidavit and Zechel claimed that he had verified his records (which by the way
is untrue because it is clear that Willingham’s records reveal he was a
low-ranking enlisted man with 13 months of active duty). We also know that
Zechel was claiming other witnesses, but none have surfaced to this point.

But
now the Willlingham story is in tatters. As mentioned here before, he was
neither a retired Air Force officer nor a fighter pilot and if that is true,
then he was not in a position to see any crash of anything. We know, based on
the available documentation that Willingham originally claimed that the crash
had taken place in 1948, and while Zechel attempted to vilify Len Stringfield
for saying this in his 1978 presentation about crashed UFOs, we know, from the
available documentation that Willingham himself is responsible for this “error.”
Zechel moved the date to conform to information about a security alert in
December 1950, but there is nothing to suggest the alert had anything to do
with a flying saucer crash.

What
all this does is prove that one segment of the EBD is based on a hoax and that does
not bode well for the remainder of the document. If this paragraph is faked,
then what else in it is faked and isn’t a reasonable conclusion that it is all
faked? I think that we now have all the information we need to connect all the
dots and with that, we can draw the conclusion that the EBD is a fake based on
faulty information and complete invention. We can now move onto other, more
important things.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Here’s
something that I have never understood. How can you hold two beliefs that are
contradictory? If one is true, then the other cannot be true. They cancel out
one another.

Here’s
what I mean. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the Eisenhower Briefing
Document (EBD) received by Jaime Shandera is authentic (which means only for
this point). It tells of two crashes, one on the Brazel ranch and the other in
December 1950 in the El Indio – Guerrero area near the Texas – Mexico border.
It tells us that four “human-like beings” had been found some two miles from
the main debris field and all four had been killed in the crash. Other details,
such as the name of the base at Roswell, the creation of the Air Force Project
Sign, and Arnold sighting of June 24, 1947, suggest that the creator of the
document had knowledge of the history of the UFO phenomenon.

There
are those who believe this document but who also believe there was a crash on
the Plains of San Agustin which might have been part of the Roswell crash, and
another event near Aztec, New Mexico in March 1948. The question that arises
from this is if the EBD was created for President-elect Eisenhower, why are
these other two crashes left out? There is no reason to hide that information
from Eisenhower, unless those creating the EBD knew that those events hadn’t
happened? In other words, they didn’t include them because they knew they were
faked.

Taking
this a step further, and because we’ve just discussed the Interplanetary
Phenomenon Unit, we see in those two documents the information about a UFO
crash near the Trinity site on the White Sands Missile Ranch. While it could be
said that this is part of the events on the Brazel ranch, it was not mentioned
in the EDB. The documents talk of five creatures rather than four and,
importantly, mention that Eisenhower, then the top officer in the Army, would
be briefed in August 1947, eliminating the need for a briefing in November 1952.

If
we look at the First Annual Report, it mentions three sites. Two are on the
Brazel ranch and one at the Trinity site. Again, this is in conflict not only
with the EBD but also the IPU summary. So which of these documents is accurate
and which are fakes? And isn’t it possible that all three are fake?

As
mentioned in the past, the El Indio – Guerrero crash of December 6, 1950, has
but a single witness and the credibility of the crash rests on his shoulders.
In the mid-1980s when the EDB was released, nearly everyone in the UFO field
accepted this case because the witness was a retired Air Force colonel who had
been fighter pilot. The trouble is that he is neither and he changed the date
of the crash three or more times. Given those facts, it seems logical to reject
his claims of a UFO crash, and if that is true, what does that mean for both
the EBD and the First Annual Report, which contain that information?

I
had planned to talk of other MJ-12 documents that seem to contradict one
another, but this all makes the point. There are fatal flaws in each of the
documents. Any document created at the supposed level at which these were
created would be accurate. There wouldn’t be the sort of elemental errors seen
here. If there were three crashes, then three crashes would have been
mentioned.

I
will point out one other obvious thing because there are some who don’t seem to
get it. In various MJ-12 documents there are anachronisms… that is, there are
things mentioned that did not exist when the documents were allegedly created.
I’ve pointed out that the First Annual Report written in 1952 mentions Project
Moon Dust which wasn’t created until late 1957 as an example. The MJ-12 manual
SOM1-01 sent to Don Berliner some time ago, suggested as one of the cover
stories to suggest to the press that the debris was from a “downed satellite.”
The manual was allegedly created in 1954 when there were no satellites to crash
and scatter debris. Such a suggestion prior to October 1957 would raise more
questions than it answered.

What
all that means is that the documents have some real problems that are not
easily explained. They contain information that just wasn’t available when they
were allegedly created and they seem to be predictive of the future. Or, more
precisely, this seems to suggest the documents are forged.

However, the real question
that I have is how one person can hold two sets of beliefs that are mutually
exclusive. If the EBD is authentic, then the tales of other crashes, on the
Plains of San Agustin and at Aztec must be false… and if those are real events,
then why are they not mentioned in the EBD? One set of facts or documents must
be wrong and given everything else we know, it seems obvious that all of the
documents are fraudulent… but as they say, “That’s just my opinion

Sunday, March 23, 2014

There
is another alleged MJ-12 document that suffers from many of the same problems
as the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary and this is the Majestic Twelve
Project, Annual Report which is believed to have been created during the summer
of 1952. This is another of the documents provided by Timothy Cooper through
his source of Thomas Cantwheel, that unidentified man who claimed to have been
on the inside of UFO crashes investigations and with the Majestic Twelve or
some such.

These
are the conclusions from a larger document which rehashes some of the
information from other documents and adds to the knowledge that we have been
told is highly classified. It is clear from the document that, “…no country on
this earth has the means and the security of its resources to produce such
[meaning an interplanetary craft].”

It
is noted that “The occupants of these planform vehicles are, in most respects,
human or human-like. Autopsies, so far indicate, that these beings share the
same biological needs as humans.”

One
of the things that would become important in understanding the veracity of the
document said, “The ATIC Interrogation Reports, numbered 1 to 93 (the last
dated December, 1950), present significant information on a broad variety of
subjects and areas where witnesses were obtained subsequent to the post-1947
incident. The un-published documents consolidate records of interrogation
derived from the accumulated reports of interviews of selected witnesses from
New Mexico and military personnel involved in removal of evidence.”

It
is after Section P labeled as “Government Policy of Control and Denial,” a list
of statements about all these events is found. For example, it said, “The
Panel’s review of the AEC and AFSWP investigation of Site L-1 and the Air Force
Site L-2, has led the Panel to conclude that the objects under study, are the
result of a high altitude ejection of a [sic] escape cylinder from a fatal
mid-air collision of two unidentified circular planform aircraft of
interplanetary nature.”

As
had been seen in the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary, there are the
coordinates for L-2 [which is why the two documents can be tied together] and
they are written in the same weird format, meaning “Lat. 33-40-31, Long.
106-28-29.… this site yielded the most material for analysis.”

We
learn that Site L-2 is associated with Site L-1, again for which no coordinates
are provided, which also seems strange. The descriptions of both sites seem to
match to some degree and that “impact and the debris pattern… and debris
pattern suggests that the craft hit the ground at a sharp angle and continued
to remain airborne until coming to rest at Site L-2.”

Then
comes a statement that turns part of this upside down. According to the
document “The second craft that impacted at Site L-3, provided very little
evidence that it too was similar in design, so the impact was vertical in
nature and at very high speed. It is believed that the debris discovered on 2
July 1947, by a local rancher was the result of a mid-air collision with an
X-plane from HAFB [Holloman Air Force Base]; another unidentified object; or
possibly collided with both…”

According
to the document, “There were five recovered bodies, two of which were found in
a severely damaged escape cylinder, and the remaining three were found some
distance away from the cylinder. All five appeared to have suffered from sudden
decompression and heat suffication [sic] (recovery and autopsies of the
occupants are covered in detail in a separate study GRAY SUIT within Projects
612 and 621…”

Later,
it is noted that tissue samples from the contamination of four technicians
involved in the recovery were being held at Fort Detrick, MD.

And
to make matters worse, there is the note, “Detection of a high altitude
explosion was recorded by a Project MOGUL constant level balloon on 4 July
1947.”

At
another point it said, “On 6 December 1950, MAJCOM-4 alerts MAJCOM-1 of a
breach in DEW Greenland of a UFO on a south-westerly course. HQ IPU alerted and
dispatched a scientific team to El Indio-Guerrero on the Texas-Mexico border.
MAJCOM-4 orders a recovery team from Project Stork and MOON DUST to crash
site…”

But
here’s the problem with those things mentioned above. They are out of place.
They shouldn’t be in this document because they didn’t exist at the time it was
supposedly written. Or other, better information has superseded it. Newer
information has shown where the older data are wrong. For example, the document
states that “…ATIC Interrogation Reports, numbered 1 to 93 (the last dated
December, 1950), present significant information on a broad variety of
subjects…” But, according to Brad Sparks, ATIC wasn’t formed until May 1951 and
therefore could not issue a series of reports before its existence.

Although
there is the discussion about some sort of mid-air collision, the best evidence
today is that there was a single craft that scattered its debris over three
sites, all of them between Corona, New Mexico and Roswell. There is no evidence
of a crash near the Trinity Site, other than in the MJ-12 documents. While an
argument can be made that the information we have today does not completely
eliminate the collision scenario, it can also be argued that it is out of date
information that was the current thinking by some in the mid-1990s. That dates
the creation of the document to that time.

Then,
unlike the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary, this document adds a third
site. This might be an attempt to account for the later information coming from
UFO researchers in the 1990s. Realizing that something else had come down
between the Brazel ranch debris field and Roswell, the forger added this new
detail to conform to the new and better information. As an aside, this
information should have appeared in the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary,
since it would have been available in July 1947. This all, of course, is
indicative of a hoax rather than the truth.

Worse
still, is the suggestion that Mack Brazel had found the debris field on July 2.
It has been claimed by some that the crash took place either late on July 2 or
early on July 3. Brazel found the debris on July 3 or 4, according to some of
the scenarios, but none of them include finding debris as early as July 2.

The
idea of a collision between an experimental aircraft out of Holloman is not
borne out by research. Air Force investigation showed that no military
aircraft, either in the regular inventory or in the experimental stages
disappeared in early July 1947. Those on the inside of these organizations,
with the clearances necessary, would know this. They might speculate about a
collision with an unknown object but they would know that it was not an
aircraft of any type.

We
move into trivia again. Holloman Air Force Base was, in fact, the Alamogordo
Army Air Field in 1947, but I suppose you could argue that someone writing
about this in 1952 would use the current name of the air field rather than the
older name.

Almost
the same could be said about the tissue samples were sent to Fort Detrick. The
problem here is that Fort Detrick was Camp Detrick in 1952. The new designation
would not be made until some four years after the document was allegedly
written. Yes, you could say that it is a minor mistake that might have been
made by someone who was not fully aware of how the Army designated their
installations. Even someone inside the Army might not understand this. The
question to be asked is how many of these sorts of errors are allowed before it
becomes clear that the document was not written by an insider?

Part
of that answer is found in the next statement about a MOGUL balloon detecting
the collision or explosion on a July 4. First, there was no July 4 MOGUL flight
and there is no indication that any sort of explosion detected by MOGUL. This
is not to mention that it contradicts the other information suggesting that
Brazel found the debris on July 2. If the alleged detonation was detected by
the July 4 flight, then how is it linked to an event that happened two days
before it was launched?

But
it is the next paragraph that proves the document a hoax. It begins with a date
of December 6, 1950, and claims that the UFO breeched the DEW in Greenland. The
problem is that the DEW line didn’t exist in 1950 and according to Brad Sparks
the name wasn’t even “coined until the MIT Project Lincoln Summer Study Group
report of September 1952. The DEW line was not started until 1954.”

Even
worse, according to the document, “HQ IPU alerted and dispatched a scientific
team to El Indio-Guerrero on the Texas-Mexico border.” This is based on the
testimony of Robert Willingham, who claimed that as a high-ranking Air Force
officer and fighter pilot, he had seen the crash. The trouble is that
Willingham was neither an officer nor a fighter pilot and his story has been
discredited. It would seem that a tale, invented in the 1960s by Willingham and
that has undergone several revisions since then, would not appear in an
authentic document created more than a decade before Willingham made his first
claim.

Finally,
we know that Project Stork was the analysis done by Battelle and had nothing to
do with crash retrievals. Although it began early enough to be mentioned in
this document, it is clear that the author didn’t know what Project Stork was.

Attached
to this is the mention of the MOON DUST team but this is a real problem.
According to documents that I located in the Project Blue Book files and a
letter dated December 12, 1957, MOON DUST began in the fall of 1957. In other
words, it would not exist for five years and there is no way for it to deploy a
team in 1950.

To
summarize (which is to say, let’s beat this dead horse), this document is
filled with internal contradictions, it is filled with inaccurate information,
and it contains information that would be correct if the programs, units and
projects actually existed in 1952. While it might be argued that this is a
draft (which would have been destroyed when the final draft was completed) so
that you might expect the typos, misnamed military organizations, and some
inaccurate information, all of which would be corrected in the final draft,
there is no way to explain the predictions for the future. There is no way for the author to know the DEW
line would be created two years in the future, would know that it would be
called the DEW line before the name was coined, and no way to know that MOON
DUST would be created some five years later. These, to me, are the fatal flaws.

For
those interested, there are more examples of this in the document. I just
didn’t bother to enumerate all of them. And yes, I know that the comment will
be made that the way to discredit a leak of classified information is to pump
false information into it so no one knows what is accurate, what is false, and
the whole thing is rejected. But that isn’t the point here. These documents
just appeared in Timothy Cooper’s mail box and the trail basically ends there.

Without
a provenance, without an eyewitness, without anything to allow us to validate
the documents, there is but one sane course. Ignore them. Reject them. Move our
research efforts into another arena. Unfortunately, the facts about this
document are not enough to remove it from the case. Instead it is considered
highly reliable by some in the UFO community.

There
is one other thing to be said. During all my investigations into the MJ-12
documents, regardless of source, Stan Friedman, Dr. Robert Wood and Ryan Wood,
have answered most of my email questions. All are aware of my personal belief
in MJ-12 but they do respond and I appreciate that. It would be simple for them
to ignore my questions but they don’t. I thank them for putting up with my
questions.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

The
other night as I was cursing the cable I blundered into another of those UFO
programs filled with hysterical narration and a belief that nearly every
outrageous claim is based in reality. In this case they were talking about the
Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit as if the documentation existed to prove that
the Army had, at one time, investigated UFOs under that unit title. They
flashed some documentation but in today’s world with nearly everyone and her
brother creating UFO documents for fun and profit you would think that a little
caution would be called for. But there was really nothing in the documentary to
suggest that this wasn’t true other than a mention of the “controversial MJ-12”
documents.

I
had thought that it had been fairly well established that this IPU information
had been discredited and was a little surprised to see it being used as
evidence that MJ-12 was real, as was the Roswell UFO crash along with a similar
event over on the Plains of San Agustin (or more accurately, a point to the
southeast of Socorro, but more on that later). So I wondered just what do we
know about the IPU and where did that information originate.

It
seems that in 1977 Larry Bryant had filed a somewhat generic FOIA request with
the Army asking about their gathering of UFO reports. Eventually, in response,
the Army said that their records had been sent to the Air Force in 1962 so they
no longer had anything related to UFOs. If you look at the timing here, you’d
see that the Air Force was also attempting to get rid of the UFO investigation
or relegate it to the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Information (SAFOI),
so the Army, having the perfect place to dump their UFO material, did so. All
this means that at the time no one wanted to get stuck with the UFO problem.

Bryant
filed another request and in 1978 the Army came back with what they termed an
“institutional memory,” which was their way of saying they’d asked an older
member of the team what he could remember. He said that in 1958 the UFO reports
were processed by the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit. This was set up in 1958
after the launch of the Soviet satellites in late 1957. According to the
institutional memory, all the material gathered was sent to the Air Force in
1962. The IPU was abolished at that point.

Brad
Sparks believed that the actual name was probably something like the
Intelligence Processing Unit and the function was that of gathering all sorts
of intelligence reports about all sorts of things to be distributed to the
various commands and activities where that information could be exploited.
According to Sparks, based on his review of various organizational charts and
other documentation, he found the name of the IPU was actually Input Processing
Unit, and if Sparks was right about its function, then this name makes more
sense than the more exciting Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit.

And
while you could argue that Sparks has gotten this wrong, though the evidence
supports him, there seems to be one fact that is not in dispute. The IPU did
not begin to function until 1958. There is no evidence that it existed prior to
that.

But
then documents from the IPU began to surface. They seemed to come from a man
named Timothy Cooper who received them from a fellow named Thomas “Cy” Cantwheel
which is a pseudonym so that he can’t be traced and his claims about his
background can’t be independently verified. One of the documents that relates
to the IPU is labeled Top Secret and it mentions only those with “Majic access
may have access.” This strikes me as a rather wishy-washy way to say that
“Access to the document is restricted to those with Majic clearance,” but then,
that’s just my personal opinion.

The
document is the “Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary,” and it is classified
as “Top Secret – Ultra.” There is a problem with this as well. A classified project
known as “Ultra” existed during World War II. Ultra was an attempt to gather
and decrypt Nazi communications at the highest level. By the end of the war
this was an Allied effort that was of significant importance and certainly
contributed to the defeat of the Nazis. But the point is, the classification
for the project was Top Secret Ultra and that was for that specific project
which has nothing to do with UFOs.

Overlooking
this, the document lays out the “facts” about the Roswell UFO crash. The problem
here is that investigations as outlined in these documents have been superseded
by new and better information. It places a part of the crash at Site LZ - 2
(which I suppose is Landing Zone 2) some twenty miles southeast (that’s right,
southeast) of Socorro, which moves it from the Plains of San Agustin to “Lat.
33 – 40 – 31, Long. 106 – 28 – 29, with Oscura Peak being the geographic
reference point.” Overlooking the fact that the coordinates would have been
listed as 33.40.31N and 106.28.29W (33° 40' 31"
N, 106° 28' 29" W),
those coordinates are not on the Plains of San Agustin, but southeast of
Socorro. While the Barnett story is questioned and certainly does not relate to
the Roswell crash, it was clear that he was talking about the high country meaning
the Plains and not someplace to the southeast.

For
those keeping score at home and who don’t have Google Earth on their computers,
those coordinates, along with Oscura Peak, are on the White Sands Missile Range
near the Trinity site. It’s difficult enough to get onto the debris field found
by Mack Brazel since it is private property surrounded by BLM land. No one is
going to drive out onto the missile range to dig on that site, let alone get
near the Trinity site without permission. As far as I know, no one has been
there to see what might have been left behind.

In
fact, that leads to another question. Why is it that they have the coordinates
for LZ – 2, but not for the Brazel ranch site? I suspect the reason is that
when this document was created, the coordinates of the Brazel site were known
to very few people and if the document had the wrong coordinates, that would
call its legitimacy into question. The hoaxer just didn’t know those
coordinates.

These
few things should be enough for those paying attention to reject this document
as fraudulent. It should be enough to prove that this document is a forgery and
a not very clever one at that. It does nothing to support the idea of the
Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit because the document is an invention created in
the 1990s, after the publication of the various books about the Roswell crash,
but the forger didn’t seem to have looked at a map, which proves the forgery.
(Or maybe I should say he did look at a map and picked the location because of
its highly restricted access. He didn’t have to worry about someone going there
to see what they might find.)

In
fact, I can date it even better than that because it does mention Mogul and no
one was talking about Mogul until the early 1990s. It is unlikely that a report
created in 1947 would refer to the balloon project by that name. It probably
would have referred to it as the New York University balloon project or the
constant level balloons rather than Mogul, if mentioned it at all. More likely
it would have just mentioned weather balloons if it was felt necessary to make
that connection. All that does is allow us to date the time of creation for the
document and point to another flaw in it.

But,
remember, the IPU, by whatever name, didn’t exist in 1947 and wouldn’t exist
for another decade according to the best information available. This document
does nothing to prove that the name of the organization was the Interplanetary
Phenomenon Unit because the document is a fake.

In
fact there is no real documentation confirming the existence of such an
organization at all. It was the “institutional memory” who created the name
based on what he remembered. That “institutional memory” was Craig Hunter who,
some two decades after the fact, mentioned all that he remembered about the
IPU. There is no official document with the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit name
on it…

Oh,
I know what you’ll say. There are letters to researchers that prove the
Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit existed, or exists, because it is referred to as
the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit in these official communications. In one of
those, written by Lieutenant Colonel Lance R. Corine, it says, “As you note in
your letter, the so-called Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU) was
disestablished…”

In
other words, Corine is not actually confirming the existence of the IPU as the
Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit because that is the name of the unit used by
William Steinman in his letter to the Army. Steinman gave them the name. Yes,
the IPU existed but it was not the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit. It was the
Input Processing Unit, which certainly isn’t the same thing.

And,
yes, this is splitting a fine hair, but the point is, other than the
“institutional memory” of the name, the letters cited as proof seem to be
responding to information included in the FOIA requests. I’d like to see a
document from a government source (other than MJ-12, of course) that uses the
name Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit on it. Brad Sparks said that he’s seen
organizational charts with IPU on them, but not that particular name.

The
evidence for the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit is one man’s memory that seems
to be contradicted by the documentation from official sources, which you all
are now free to reject because it is from official sources and is all part of
the bigger conspiracy. Everything, including to those letters to researchers,
points to the creation of the IPU in 1958 which means that a document that was
allegedly created in 1947 using the name Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit is a
fake. And if it is a fake then those using it in a documentary to support
another aspect of the UFO phenomenon have failed to prove their point. A fake
document proves absolutely nothing and shouldn’t be used as evidence for the
existence of something else.

Oh,
I do get it. Those producing documentaries don’t have the comprehensive
knowledge needed to understand what is going on. They must rely on the
“experts” to understand what they are being told… and too often there are
competing points of view. Sometimes the information is easily available and the
evidence of fraud is almost overwhelming but they still use it to bolster their
case. They want to believe just as badly as some of those in the field want to
believe so the negative evidence is reduced to a single sentence or phrase that
is almost mumbled. The “controversial” comment is misunderstood by many,
suggesting that there is still an open question. In this case, with this
organization, the IPU, and this particular document, there is no real
controversy. The results are in and the document is a fake.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Although
this might be considered kicking the sleeping dogs and stirring the pot
unnecessarily, I think it important to address this issue one more time. I
have, previously, denied that I was involved in the investigation of the slides
that allegedly show the body of an alien creature. When I said that I hadn’t
participated in the investigation, some saw that as a lie on my part, but the
truth then, as now, is that other than a few limited enquiries made prior to
learning more of the story, I did not investigate.

To
recap, about a year ago, rumors began to circulate that members of the Team had
learned of two slides that showed an alien creature on a gurney. At that time,
I knew nothing about this and the claim that we all were obligated to remain
silent because of some kind of nondisclosure agreement (NDA) was untrue. Nick
Redfern seemed to have some information about that and I called him. He told me
the story and I had no reason to doubt what he was saying which is not to say
that it was accurate. Nick was telling me what he had been told without
investigation on his part (sort of the same thing I’ve been saying).

I
emailed the members of the team, telling them what I knew and that I had signed
no NDA. I was surprised to learn that Nick's information was accurate. There were
two slides and an NDA had been signed. At this point, realizing that anything I
said publicly could be construed as a violation of the agreement, meaning
simply that the man holding the slides would believe that either Tom Carey or Don
Schmitt had told me about the slides violating the NDA. This was not
true. I would have liked to publish on my blog that information because my
source on it was Nick Redfern, but I was afraid that the slide owner would not
believe I had learned about them from another source.

That
was the extent of my “investigation.” I learned that others were working on
this and that anything I did could compromise their working relationship with
the source. Once in a while, I would hear something new, mostly from Nick or at
Rich Reynolds’ UFO Iconoclasts blog. But I was getting no new information from
those involved in the investigation and was offering no advice, other than to
suggest that I thought the whole thing problematic. There was no provenance for
the slides and no one really knew who the photographer was. This is the same basic
problem that haunted the MJ-12 nonsense for years.

At
one point late last summer, after suggesting these problems, I was shown a
research protocol for validating the slides. I did not solicit the document. I
was provided with it because of a negative comment I had made in another arena.
At the time, I thought the document was telling me about things that been done,
but on rereading it, realized it was merely a proposal for investigation.

All
this is just a preliminary to remind those who have not been paying attention
the circumstances of this dust up. I had told many that I wasn’t involved in
the investigation and I mentioned to a few that I knew some of the details but
not all of them. In fact, when Nick said that the “nether” regions of the alien
were covered, I thought he meant by a cloth, not by a hand-lettered sign. Such
was my knowledge of the slides and my “investigation” into them.

Just
a few days ago I received a copy of UFO
Today. Philip Mantle supplied it to me and I found the article “Do Slides
from 1947 Show A Roswell Humanoid,” written by Tony Bragalia. It is a recap of
the investigation into the slides and how Tom and Don came into possession of
them. It was similar to a piece he had published last year. Tony wrote, “My
research associates, pioneer Roswell investigators and authors Tom Carey and
Don Schmitt, began a dialog with…” Well, for my purposes here, the rest of the
sentence is irrelevant (oh, okay, it said, “…with a brother and his sister, a
onetime estate-cleaner.” See? It was irrelevant.).

At
that point Tony tells how the unnamed brother and sister got their hands on the
slides and how the discovery of them eventually reached Tom and Don. He goes
into some detail about the woman who originally owned the slides, supposedly, I
guess, inherited from her husband and the like. For those interested, check out
the UFO Today web site to learn how
you can acquire that issue of the digital magazine.

Later
in the article, Tony wrote, “Anyone who may know more about Ray [the man who
owned the slides] (or his professional colleagues) are encouraged to contact a
Roswell investigative team member – Tom Carey, Don Schmitt, David Rudiak or
this author with any relevant information.”

See,
once again my name is left out. Why? Because, I was not involved in the
investigation. These four were working on it without consulting me. This
article, I believe, proves that I wasn’t involved in it. I was knowledgeable
(as were several others), but not involved.

True,
I had some inside knowledge, but that isn’t the same as participating in an
investigation. I have inside knowledge of Project Blue Book (well, not so
inside anymore) but I didn’t investigate UFOs for the Air Force or Project Blue
Book. Yes, I know that this will do nothing to convince those who believe I
lied about it that I did not. But maybe some of those who are sitting on the
fence will understand that sometimes situations are just not black and white
and sometimes people just make errors.

I
hope that information from one of those who did participate and are
participating in the investigation will be good enough but I know it won’t. They
are too deeply invested in the idea that I was a participant in the
investigation. Sometimes you just get caught between the rock and the hard
place and there isn’t much you can do about it. This is not the first time that
something like this has happened to me… guilt by association… but I can hope it
will be the last.

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Today,
while searching for information about something else, I saw that there was an
Internet listing that suggested there was an “Important Message from UFO Magazine.” Having contributed to it
frequently, and because I know those who have been involved with it in the past
including Don and Vicki Ecker, I clicked on the link. I mean, the magazine hadn’t
been around for a while and I wondered what was going on. What I found was
this:

The
owner of UFO Magazine, Inc. has officially noticed [sic] that he is putting UFO
Magazine, Inc. up for sale. We do not know If [sic] there is currently a buyer,
or who the buyer is, or when the sale will be effectuated.

However,
in anticipated of that proposed sale, the owner UFO Magazine, Inc. has directed
us to terminate all publication of UFO Magazine including, but not limited to,
the fulfillment of any subscriptions. Because we are precluded from any future
publication specifically containing the trademark of UFO Magazine, Inc., you
should direct all inquiries regarding UFO Magazine to:

UFO Magazine, Inc.

5455 Centinela Avenue

Los Angeles, CA. 90066.

This
website contained a number of comments about this, though many of them have no
relevance to the discussion at hand. Bill Birnes explained some of the back
story to the acquisition of the magazine and how he became involved with Philip
Corso and UFOs. It was that association with Corso that eventually lead to
Birnes’ association with UFO Magazine.

Also
in the comments section, Birnes wrote, “Because, as a result of our license
revocation, we will be precluded from publishing any new issues of UFO Magazine…”
He then outlined the options available to subscribers to satisfy them about the
unfulfilled part of their subscriptions.

This
is just another example of a publication founded prior to the Internet to find
itself in financial difficulty. In the case of UFOs, I wonder if blogs like
this one, and websites such as UFO
Chronicles (though I’m not suggesting any wrongdoing or blame here), haven’t
contributed to the problem. Why buy a magazine when there is so much UFO
content on the web for free? I charge nothing for those who wish to read what I
have to say here and Frank Warren of UFO
Chronicles makes his content free as well. I could name a dozen, two dozen
or more blogs and web sites that provide a wide range of UFO information from
the ridiculous to the credulous to the hostile to the well-researched and
thought out.

The
point here is not the diversity of writers, opinions, information or content
but that it is free for those interested. Why buy a magazine when you can read
it all on the Internet? It isn’t just the UFO magazines that find this, but a
wide range of publications. It seems unless it is related to celebrity gossip, tattooing,
guns or cars and motorcycles, no one is buying magazines.

So UFO Magazine is gone the way of so much
else these days. Say what you will about it, the magazine did supply a wide
range of opinion and content. We now have one less source of information.